Wars in Syria and Iraq have pushed the number of asylum claims in industrialized countries to a 22-year high, and the United Nations refugee agency found asylum applications in 2014 increased dramatically from the previous year.
The UNHCR report Asylum Trends 2014 estimates 866,000 new asylum applications were lodged in 44 of the world’s richest countries last year. This is a 45 percent increase over 2013. The agency says the 2014 figure is the highest since 1992, when the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
The report finds almost 150,000 applications, or one …read more
Source: Voice of America
